These words made him feel uneasy. The voice was hollow but calm, the voice of someone who wasn’t afraid of the abyss he was staring into.
‘Do we know each other?’
‘Very well. Or not at all, if you prefer.’
The unease became a slight sense of dread. The priest found refuge in the only words he could offer him.
‘You’ve entered a confessional. I assume you wish to make confession?’
‘Yes.’
The monosyllable was resolute but nonchalant.
‘Then tell me your sins.’
‘I don’t have any. I’m not looking for absolution because I don’t need it. And anyway I know you wouldn’t give it to me.’
On his side, the priest was stunned by this declaration of futility. From the tone of voice he sensed that it wasn’t mere presumption but came from something much bigger and more devastating. At any other time, Father Michael McKean might have reacted differently. Now he still had his eyes and ears full of images and sounds of death and the sense of defeat that takes hold after an almost sleepless night.
‘If that’s what you think, then what can I do for you?’
‘Nothing. I just wanted to leave you a message.’
‘What kind of message?’
A moment’s silence. But it wasn’t hesitation. He was simply giving him time to clear his mind of any other thoughts.
‘It was me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I blew up the building on the Lower East Side.’
That took Father McKean’s breath away.
The images piled up in his mind. Dust, ambulances, the screams of the wounded, the blood, corpses taken away in sheets, the moans of the survivors, the anguish of those who had lost everything. The statements on television. A whole city, a whole country again transfixed with the fear that was, as someone had said, the only true horseman of the apocalypse. And the indistinct shadow on the other side of that thin barrier claimed to be responsible for all that.
Reason dictated that he take his time and think clearly. There were sick people in the world who liked to assume the guilt for murders and disasters they couldn’t possibly be responsible for.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘What?’
‘That I’m a fantasist, that there’s nothing to prove what I’m saying is true.’
Michael McKean, a man of reason and a priest by belief, was nothing at that moment but an animal with all its senses on the alert. And every shred of his ancestral instinct screamed at him that the man on the other side of the confessional was telling the truth.
He needed to breathe for a few moments, before continuing. The other man understood that and respected his silence. When he found his voice again, he appealed to a piety he already knew he wouldn’t find.
‘What do all those deaths, all that pain, mean to you?’
‘Justice. And justice should never create pain. So much of it has been dispensed in the past that it has become an object of worship. Why should this time be different?’
‘What do you mean by justice?’
‘The Red Sea opening and closing. Sodom. Gomorrah. I have many other examples, if you want them.’
The voice was silent for a moment. On his side of the confessional, which at that moment felt like the coldest place in the world, Father McKean would have liked to shout out that these were just stories, that they shouldn’t be taken literally, that…
He held back and missed the opportunity to retaliate. The other man took this as an invitation to continue.
‘Men have had two gospels, one for their souls and one for their lives. One religious and one secular. Both have taught men more or less the same things. Brotherhood, justice, equality. There have been people who have spread them through the world and through time.’
The voice appeared to come from a place much further than the tiny distance separating them. Now it had become a mere breath, sour with disappointment. The kind of disappointment that gives rise not to tears but to anger.
‘But almost nobody has had the strength to live according to these teachings.’
‘All men are imperfect,’ Father McKean replied. ‘That’s part of nature. How can you not feel compassion? Haven’t you repented what you did?’
‘No. Because I will do it again. And you will be the first to know.’
Father McKean hid his face in his hands. What was happening to him was too much for one man. If this person’s words corresponded to the truth, then this was a test beyond his strength. Or the strength of anyone who wore a priest’s cassock. The voice pressed on. Not fierce now, but soft and persuasive. Full of understanding.
‘In your words during the mass, there was pain. There was compassion. But there was no faith.’
He tried in vain to rebel, not against those words, but against his fear. ‘How can you say that?’
‘I’ll help you regain it, Michael McKean,’ the man continued, as if he hadn’t heard the question. ‘I can do that.’
There was another pause. Then the three words that set eternity in motion.
‘I am God.’
CHAPTER 15
In many ways, Joy was the kingdom of almost.
Everything almost worked, was almost shiny, almost new. The roof was almost fine and the paint on the outside walls almost didn’t need retouching. The few permanent employees received their salary almost regularly, the outside helpers almost always forewent theirs. Everything was second-hand, and in that display of the old and worn anything new stood out like the light of a beacon in the distance. But it was also a place where every day, with great difficulty, a new piece of the life raft was built.
As he drove the Batmobile along the unpaved drive towards the house, John Kortighan knew that in the bus with him he had a group of kids to whom life had been a terrible counsellor. Little by little it had devoured their trust, and they had been alone for so long they took solitude for the norm. Each one, with that originality typical of adverse fate, had found his or her own destructive way to go astray, and the indifference of the world had covered their traces.
Now in this place, together, they could try to find themselves, realizing that, logically and not by chance, they had a right to an alternative. And he felt fortunate and grateful to have been chosen to be part of that enterprise.
However hard and desperate it was.